


My Knees Bleed From Praying This Isn't My Life's Theme

by Squash (JeSuisGourde)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 22:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15326013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeSuisGourde/pseuds/Squash
Summary: Owen Harper, from beginnings to beginnings. Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and nothing but furious frustration, who found science and became a doctor, who found Katie Russell and fell in love, who lost his fiancee and found Torchwood. Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a drive to help, who never learned how to deal with loss.





	My Knees Bleed From Praying This Isn't My Life's Theme

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently reading The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass on my lunch breaks, and one chapter had a narrative style that made me want to try something fic-ish with it. So, yet another Owen fic, this time in past tense. Also, please excuse the handwaving of the progress of Owen's medical degree. According to the timeline via Fragments, as far as I can tell, Owen was 24/25 when he was a fully qualified doctor, which doesn't make any sense considering the amount of schooling you need to be a doctor. (Unless he was a junior doctor at the time, but they never said that? Whatever. It's fucking fiction.)

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper who had a brilliant mind and a drive to help, who drank the hours away every night and drove too fast, who sneaked smoke breaks at work and wore a coat of spikes made from harsh words and rough hands. At Torchwood, he saved lives but ached when they were lost. It hardened him, but made cracks form more broadly. He yearned for connection, but couldn't shed his armor. A brilliant mind, anger, and a broken heart.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and nothing but furious frustration, who sneaked smoke breaks at school and picked fights because he couldn't stand to lose and had words barbed and ready, who ignored or sneered at the younger boys in the halls but jumped to protect them if someone beat them up. As a child, he was shy but full of an inner energy that radiated as a sort of anxious anger, a frustration with no direction. A gentle heart that learned quickly not to betray its innards, that grew thick skin from thrown fists and thrown dishes as well as thrown insults. Cynicism and misanthropy were cultivated early. By the age of eight he and his mum could trade insults like the best of them, and years later he could still remember the shouting match on his tenth birthday, the way his rage had boiled over instead of his stomach dropping out when his mother screamed into his bedroom for the thousand time that day, “I love you because you're my son, but that doesn't mean I have to fucking _like_ you,” before he slammed the door in her face. By twelve his reflexes were as good at home as they were in schoolyard fights. At thirteen he realised how much he loved science: the sense of discovery, the way it managed to straddle the realms of clear logic and murky unknown.

It was his neighbour's dog that introduced him to the medical field. Davie, fourteen like Owen, but flighty and already running swiftly in the direction of being a bookkeeper, came to Owen's front door, and, blubbering an explanation, led Owen down to the ground floor, to his own back garden where a black and white speckled dog lay panting and whimpering on its side in the shade of a tiny half-collapsed shed. Owen sat down in front of the dog, crossing his legs and frowning at the puzzle in front of him. He patted the dog's head and let it lick the salty sweat from his fingers for a moment before gently prodding the crooked and broken foreleg it stretched limply before it. Feeling along the the bent limb, he could tell the bone had snapped and moved apart, that the two ends needed to be realigned and immobilized. The shed in Davie's yard held his father's tools for house painting; Owen found few stir sticks and tore some strips from a painter's tarp for a makeshift splint. Carefully, with the dog's head held gently in Davie's lap, Owen eased the bone back into place, ignoring the winces from Davie at each whimper or yelp of the dog. One paint stir-stick on either side of the leg, wrapped tightly with strips of tarp, and the splint was complete. They both watched silently as the dog lay whining on the ground for a long time, before finally struggling to its feet. It placed its weight gingerly on the injured leg, and, finding it painful but not impossible, hobbled off to lie in its little dog house on the other side of the tiny garden. Owen felt a sense of accomplishment, and the rush of being able to help and _do something_ as well as the success of figuring it out made him feel suddenly amazing and so _real_.

Six months later the dog had a limp, and a sort of lump where the bone healed only slightly right, but at least it was walking and well. Owen, halfway between frustration and destiny, snapped and snarled at Davie like a wounded dog, because Davie had seen his compassionate side.

Fourteen, and the screaming matches with his mother were turning to throwing matches, to living in each other's pockets in their tiny apartment, trying somehow to find miles' distance between them in the three and a half rooms, jabbing each other in the ribs and the eyes and the heart when everything got to feel too close. Fourteen, and any inch of softness was forced away to the back of his mind, to the back of his instincts. Fourteen, and he just wanted out.

So Owen found biology, and medicine, and the feeling of discovery, and the accomplishment of finally satisfying an unrealized need to help, but found himself ensconced in a metal armour of foul language, fights, glares, and the snarl of someone with next to nothing left to lose. He flew through his O levels, with school as the only good distraction from the jabs of un-motherly words, the hatred, and the protective shell that tightened around him, so hard and sharp that no boys would even think of getting near him, so that _no one_ would touch him.

And then his sixteenth birthday came, and he got home from school to find his bags packed and sitting by the front door; he'd been expecting this day for a while now, sneered at his mother standing in the doorway before she could start the fight, “That's the nicest thing you've done for me in years, Mother,” so that her “Get out” lost its punch and the front door swung shut on him and his belongings with an angrier slam, but he felt like he'd won just a little bit.

Davie's parents wouldn't take him in, but their elderly neighbour had been a chemistry teacher in his former years, and took him in with the curiosity of someone who recognises a potential prodigy, and with Owen's promise that he would work in a local corner shop, that he'd pay at least for his own food if not some of the rent, that he would keep to himself and stay tidy. Owen didn't want to just get stuck as a shop boy, or settle for going to vocational school like the father he never managed to know. He wanted to get his A levels, go to university, be _something_ , be _someone_ , somehow.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Owen Harper, and somehow, in all that rage and thick skin, glares and screaming matches, what got to him was his mother's little barb that he wasn't going to mean anything, that he would go nowhere in life. What got to him was the knowledge that every teacher he'd ever had took one look at his sneering face and his ratty clothes and doubted his ability to do anything good in the world. What got to him was that people looked at him and saw nothing but a rough, stupid kid. So Owen Harper stood in the bathroom in Mr. Clemson's apartment and stared at himself in the mirror, looked inside himself and thought about science, and then remembered the hidden need to help, the feeling of successfully fixing a problem, and decided he wanted to be a doctor.

A levels came and went, and Owen, quietly brilliant, did biology and human biology, because in his mind they really were different, chemistry, and classical studies (because he figured he'd be learning bits of Latin and Greek anyway), and passed them easily. At the corner shop he managed to develop some sort of a straightforward customer service style, the early stages of his future bedside manner, managed not to sneer at most customers, but was never the type to apologise or make nice. More exams, applications, devouring textbooks in his room or draped across Mr. Clemson's armchair, interviews, and somehow he managed an acceptance to a fairly prestigious medical program, left Mr. Clemson for a student housing block, pulled his armour tightly around himself, and buried himself in schooling.

Once upon a time there was a young man named Owen Harper who had a brilliant mind and a hidden drive to help, who drank himself to sleep some nights but studied tirelessly, who was fascinated by everything he learned, who was prickly and snarling but who cared. He'd found his passion in medicine, and though medical school was grueling, he loved every battle it presented him with, and his professors noticed the young man with anger and compassion on his face, who flew through the courses with apparent ease. Owen was lonely, his spiky demeanor and the sarcasm that so easily came before anything else pushed people away, but he rather liked the lack of distraction, the way he could get through weeks of coursework without social obligations.

As a junior doctor placed in A&E, Owen's childhood skills of constant alertness, running on no sleep, reflexes constantly at the ready, the ability to quietly take every kind of stressor and use it to his advantage managed to keep him afloat and ahead of the rest. He could stay resolutely calm in the face of emergency, so that people looked to his solid steadiness for reassurance. The world of the body and its strangeness and pains, the moments of discovery and the buzz of emergency, all held him fast in their grip. The only criticism he ever received more than once were variations on, “You've got to have a better bedside manner, Owen. You've got to show the patient that you care. We all know you do, you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't, but you've got to show it.” And so Owen Harper was a man who picked things up faster than the rest, who was not included in the statistical deaths of changeover “killing season,” who was told time and again by his superiors that they hadn't thought he would ever succeed this easily.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a drive to help, who earned his degree and became a qualified doctor, who stayed on at A&E, working with trauma patients, and slowly learned how to bend his blunt style to a manner more comforting and gentle. Who drove too fast on the way home, just to burn off some adrenaline, who drank after work but knew his limits. Who cared but wouldn't let anyone see. Who was lonely but didn't know it, because he'd never really known anything else. Who took smoke breaks at work and stared into middle distance, thinking about his next patient, about the smoke filling his lungs, about nothing at all.

And there was a woman named Katie Russell, who was a junior doctor assigned to internal medicine, who was as extroverted and sweet as Owen was introverted and prickly, who took smoke breaks at work and chatted with the nurses and orderlies doing the same. Who introduced herself to Owen because she introduced herself to everyone. And maybe Owen was feeling slightly more friendly that day, or maybe it was because someone hadn't instinctively pulled away from the armour kept close around him, or maybe it was because he thought she was pretty. Or maybe something inside him suddenly realised that he was lonely. But Owen, known to the staff as brilliant but distant, efficient and accurate but with a barbed tongue and a personality made of shrapnel, struck up a conversation with Katie, found it easy and comfortable, and felt something inside him turn.

A few dozen smoke break conversations later and it was Katie, not Owen, asking for a date. The lunch was semi-formal, a nice restaurant, but during their walk afterward, Owen found Katie holding his hand, and he said nothing at all. More dates, and the nurses whispered to Katie that she was good for him, that he was smiling more, that his interactions with patients were gentler. There was no instantaneous moment of realisation, but something inside Owen had been waiting for someone to change him, for the right person, the safe person, to soften him so he could finally feel. It was summer, and Katie loved wine and flowers, so Owen booked a dinner in a skyscraper restaurant, with a view of the city and wisteria flowers growing on trellises overhead. Katie looked at him with delight, and though he'd kissed her before, the kiss she gave him now felt different, surer. He kissed her back with that same sureness, and inside he knew that he wanted this for as long as it could possibly last.

It was Owen that said “I love you” first. Summer had faded into autumn and they were walking together in the park, laughing and stomping leaves. With Katie, Owen's playful side came out, and he could joke and have fun without looking over his shoulder, ready to return to his armour. With Katie, he could be gentle and caring and love without fearing retaliation or manipulation or a bruise on the underbelly of his heart. The hardness melted to something malleable, the shell falling away to reveal a gentle heart, one that hurt when anyone else hurt, a soft creature that cared. And in the park, Katie climbed a statue like a child and dangled like monkey, grinning. Owen kissed the forehead hanging down in front of him, wrapped his scarf around her neck, and the words fell out with the smile that formed as she stared at him upside down: “I love you.” Katie grabbed the statue tight to keep from falling, but grinned brightly as she righted herself and wrapped her arms around his neck to kiss him and respond, “I love you, too.” The rest of the walk felt brighter and warmer to both of them, a warmth that hardly seemed to fade. Owen's colleagues noticed it, too: some defense seemed to have fallen away or been removed, Owen gradually became less prickly, his tongue softer and less barbed, his shoulders less hunched and his face less guarded. Suddenly, even with patients, the _people_ he always struggled with, he was warmer, sympathetic; he cared and he was starting to show it. Katie cut through the forest of hurt he'd hidden himself in, took his hand, and showed him the way out.

Once upon time there was a man named Owen Harper, and a women named Katie Russell, who he loved enough that he was starting to love himself, who he loved enough to remove his spiked and cutting armour, who helped him change for the better, who helped him feel. Who helped him realize without really realizing it, that he had been looking for someone to change him before she came along. It was two years of dating before they moved in together, getting a flat that was small but cozy, with a tiny back garden for Katie to grow vines and wildflowers and wisteria and massive yellow sunflowers in. And Owen's love for smooth modern designs came together with Katie's adoration of all things rustic and nature, so that their house became lovely and homely inside, an ordered chaos, a refuge they both retreated to at the end of long work days at the hospital.

At night, he would curl around her, press his nose to the space behind her ear, and practice really, really feeling again by telling her everything he'd felt during the day, watched his emotions fall from his lips and shiver their way through her to come out something he could look at without shame or hide from behind fury. And when they woke up, she would tell him her day with her tea, and he'd let the emotion sluice through him and never look away.

And he could tell her about himself, about his history, all the bruises and breaks, all the screams, all the doubt, without having to go defensive and sandpaper-rough. She would listen, and kiss him where the bruises had once been, would press her lips to his chest and tell him, “You're here now. You never have to go back to that. You can be happy.”

“I am happy,” he replied, and he meant it, every time.

Owen laughed more, and made stupid jokes and played in ways he hadn't since he was a child. With Katie by his side, he made friends. “I feel like an idiot teenager,” he told her, grinning as they danced in a club, and repeated it again with a yelp and a giggle when she leapt onto his shoulders for a ride as they walked down the street with their friends. And he wanted nothing more than to feel like this forever, laughing and happy and real with Katie and with their friends. Sometimes it was hard, balancing the stress and frustration and worry of being an A&E doctor with this sudden openness of emotion, sometimes he fell back against his old shields of anger and sarcasm, sometimes the worry turned him inside out and he sat in his car with his head down and just tried to breathe.

In December, he asked her to marry him. He had thought about it every morning for months, waking up early to stare at her peaceful face, feeling his chest so full of love for her it was overwhelming, like his throat was going to close up. The ring he bought her was simple, silver with a comet-like row of tiny crystals following a single larger one. Never one for grand gestures, he simply brought it with him on a date night. The rain was clattering down outside the window, but the lights were warm and they were tucked away in a corner and he waited for a lull in the conversation, a moment of silence in which she tilted her head to the side in just that way and smiled at him and he felt his heart clench and the top of his head felt like it was floating away, but he pulled the little box out of his pocket and placed on the table in front of her and asked here simply, softly, “Will you marry me?”

And Katie looked at Owen and not the ring when she said, “Yes,” and got up so she could kiss him for real. Her smile felt like the sweetest thing in the entire world, and Owen wondered if he might just fly apart. She grinned through the rest of the meal, and he was sure his smile was just as massive. In the cab home, she kissed his neck and he pressed his mouth to her hands. “Summer,” she whispered that night, as they lay happy and entangled in bed, “Let's get married in the summer.” He promised, kissing her and tasting sunshine.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a beautiful fiancee, a job that suited him, and a heart that whose hard armour had been softened by love. He saw his patients and saved lives every day, stayed quick on his feet and solved problems like they were nothing, his porcupine personality tempered by love. He knew now, after three years, that he could show that he cared, he could be gentle and even fragile, but in the hospital, he was the one in charge, he was the one who called the shots, and no one was going to use his softness against him. Owen and Katie planned their wedding in conversations at night and giggle fits during smoke breaks at work. Owen, usually instinctively thrifty due to his upbringing, happily agreed that it could be whatever Katie wanted it to be, because he loved seeing her face look bright and excited, and the way she kissed him full of sunshine.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a fiancee he loved more than anything in the world, who went to bed laughing one night, and in the morning, kissed his fiancee awake, only to find that she didn't know where she was.

They put it down to exhaustion due to work, to waking up in the middle of a dream, to the fact they'd just bought new sheets, and ate breakfast together, trying to put it out of their minds before work. But that night, cooking dinner together, Katie couldn't remember the word for the knife she was asking for, snapping her fingers over the carrots on the counter and making a sawing motion with her hands.

“Can I get the—” She broke off, gesturing. “You know. The—The—”

“Knife? The knife?” Owen frowned, and passed it to her when she nodded. The rest of the cooking passed in silence, and Katie refused wine with dinner, a worried pinch between her brows.

Words started to disappear, filtering in and out of existence in Katie's mind. One night Owen got home from work to find a few post-it notes written on in felt-tip pen labeling the cupboard, the television, a poster print. In the bin beside the kitchen counter were half a dozen more; one crumpled but facing up presented him with a simple, ominous question mark.

And Owen stepped out of the shower a few mornings later to find her sitting on the side of their bed, still in her pyjamas, sobbing softly into her hands. He sat down and pulled her to him, his hands petting her hair. She sobbed harder.

“Katie, Katie, hey, what's wrong?” He could feel her tears against his bare chest. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, then shook her head, then looked up at him, her face full of a confused desperation. “I can't remember which drawer I keep my shirts in!” Such a little thing, but Owen felt the same panic gripping him. “Owen, what's happening to me?”

“I don't know, love. I don't know. Let's make an appointment to have the neurology department check you out, alright?” She nodded, whispered “Okay,” in the smallest voice. Owen rubbed her back gently. “Do you want to call in sick today?”

Katie wiped her cheeks and nodded, curling into a ball on the bed when Owen let her go. He called the hospital to make an appointment and then leaned over to kiss her forehead, eyes, cheeks, and finally her mouth. “Call me if you need anything at all, okay?” She nodded, gravity pulling on a few tears still leaking from the corner of her eye, and he kissed her again, partly to comfort her, partly for his own comfort. “I love you.”

The tests showed nothing. No anomalies, no deterioration, no foreign bodies, no trauma, nothing at all. MRI and x-ray scans came up clear and healthy, and tests for a thyroid condition came back clear. So Katie and Owen sat in a room in the neuropsychology office, waiting for an appointment. Katie leaned her head on Owen's shoulder and squeezed his hand hard, but he squeezed back because he was terrified too. They were interviewed and tested by the doctor, separately and together, and when the diagnosis came, and Katie wept into his shoulder, Owen shoved down the angry helplessness and held her close, but he couldn't help wanting desperately to keep trying.

When Owen got an idea in his head, there was very little that could stop him. He could tunnel-vision, out of passion or love or anger or desperation, and wouldn't stop until he found an answer or ran into a brick wall he couldn't knock down with his insistent fists. So he requested Katie's test results, insisted on more tests, insisted that the head of neurology look through them, again and again. She was barely twenty-four, there was no way she could have early onset Alzheimer's. There was no way he was going to let that be true. And through it all they kept planning their wedding, through tests and medical leave, through Katie forgetting where they lived one day while shopping for reception centre pieces, through more post-it notes in the bin, through the stress of worrying about her and working in A&E at the same time, through Katie laughing and full of sunshine one moment, frustrated and crying over her own mind the next. But no matter what they did, the answer remained the same, and Owen felt like he was losing her and there was nothing he could do. He stayed up each night, watching her sleep, staring at the face so beautiful and peaceful, feeling his heart clench with love and worry, wishing everything could be different, wishing it was all just a nightmare.

Why tea was the last straw, he wasn't sure. Perhaps it was because it was because it was something they spoke about every day, a cup of tea in the morning, when they came home from work, at night before bed even. Something so normal, even more normal than trying to remember an address. And Katie stood there, tea bag in hand, with the word and every other thought gone from her mind. Owen felt like crying, too, felt helpless and close to hopeless, desperate.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a a brilliant mind and a fiancee he loved more than anything in the world, whose own brilliant mind was vanishing in front of their eyes. Who felt his heart sink into his stomach when Jim Garrett told them the latest test had revealed a tumour. Who felt the bottom drop out of his world when Katie turned to look at him, face full of anguished confusion, and said she couldn't remember his name. She was scheduled for emergency surgery the next day.

They spent that evening trying desperately to pretend everything was normal; sat together on the sofa and watched telly, laughed together and talked about their wedding, and tried to kiss each other full of sunshine. But they drank water instead of tea, and Katie wasn't allowed to eat dinner in preparation for the surgery, so Owen decided to forgo as well. He wasn't sure he'd be able to keep anything down, anyway.

And that night they made love, slow and gentle, and Owen wrapped his arms around his lover as if he could protect her from everything in the entire world, even the disease in her brain. After, entwined together in the sheets, Katie wept terrified tears and Owen joined her crying, exhausted and overwhelmed and so scared of losing her; worried, frightened, desperate, they clung tightly to each other and mingled salt tears and tried to pretend they could climb inside each other to stay safe. When Katie finally drifted to sleep, salt tracks drying on her cheeks, Owen stayed awake, worrying, standing guard, wishing he was watching her sleep just out of love and not out of terror that he might lose her forever.

In the morning, a nurse shaved Katie's beautiful blonde hair while she clung to Owen's hand, tears trailing silently down her cheeks. They took her into surgery, sedated her with Owen still at her side. He followed them until they wheeled her into the theatre, stopping just short of the doors. “Do you think she's up to this?” he asked Garrett, though half of him was wondering if _he_ was up to this. But they had to try; if they didn't, this tumour could kill her, a horror Owen's mind could barely fathom.

He waited. He was a doctor, he knew surgeries could take a very long time, especially something as delicate and difficult as brain surgery, but it seemed to him to take years. He wanted so badly to be in there, watching, making sure she was okay. He wanted so badly to know what was going on. He felt consumed with anxiety, a worry that twitched up and down his spine and made it impossible for him to think about anything but Katie, Katie, Katie, Katie.

So he stood in front of the doors to the surgery and twitched and tapped his feet. And then the doors strained, like the pressure inside the theatre had suddenly exploded outward and then dissipated, and Owen's mind chanted louder, _Katie, Katie, Katie_! Terror gripped him, and with it the feeling of being out of control, utterly untethered, a growing panic attack, and a man with an American accent appeared at his side, apologizing.

“Who the hell are you?” Every instinct fought every other instinct: worry battered his brain, fear shortened his breath, but his earliest and most deeply ingrained instincts told him to go on the offensive and he barred the man from going into that room with his own body.

“I tried to tell them to prepare for the worst,” the stranger said to him, sounding detached, and the words made no sense to Owen, who grabbed at the man's shoulders, and then followed him into the surgical theatre with an angry determination that disintegrated into shock, stealing his breath and everything else away as he stared at the frozen bodies before him, and then Katie's body, covered in surgical blankets, on the operating table, so still.

“Katie!” And he ran to her, tunnel-visioned, forgot about the paralyzed bodies on the floor, everything focused on her, except then the sound hit him: the uninterrupted, high-pitched tone of a flatline. Then, as he tripped towards her, the _thing_ , her brain open and exposed and some _thing_ sitting in the middle of it, star-shaped, flailing.“What is that?” he managed to choke out, but he could already feel every piece of happiness in his body plummeting into the floor.

“I'm sorry, I tried to stop them,” Owen heard the man through ringing in his ears, through stuffed cotton, through the piercing sound of a flatline. “She's dead.”

The half of him that was a doctor looked over her body, assessed the situation, assessed the threat, the foreign body, the blood loss, the useless beeping of the machines, her half-exposed intubation tube. The other half of him stared blankly, whited out, nothing but _no, no, no nonononono_ screaming in his head.

“That thing in her head is an alien life form,” The man said. Owen mind responded with, _Katie has a tumour in her head. You're staring at her tumour—that isn't a normal tumour, that's an—_ “It incubates in the brain, disrupting the shape and functions.” _Like Alzheimers. Like a tumour. That's Katie's brain. I love her. That's her—_ “When it's attacked or threatened, it emits a toxic gas that's fatal to humans—clears pretty quickly.” _They were going to fix her. They were going to save her. Do the best we can for her. She can't be dead. She can't be dead._

“She can't be dead! She can't be dead.” He couldn't think. All instinct gone with shock and grief. “I'm calling the police.”

He heard the man's response through more cotton, except, “I need to take her brain back with me,” and something strong rose in him, the need to protect, the fear, the anger, the shocked grief, all of it pouring into his love for her and he wheeled around, no idea what to do except command, demand: “Don't touch her! Don't touch her, don't touch her, don't—”

And the man's hands were at him, and the fighting instinct that was so well-honed had gone soft with love and worry; his struggle was useless and everything blacked out into a numb, oblivious unconsciousness.

No one believed him. Owen felt overwhelmed and confused in the hospital-supplied robe, shaking with shock and grief, and angry that no one believed him. This _happened_ , that man was in the room with him, grabbed his shoulders, explained that there was an alien in Katie's brain. This _happened_ , and he wasn't going mad with grief or making delusional excuses for his loss. This happened, and Katie was dead and he was being put on leave and he didn't know what to do except storm out of the hospital director's office and find his clothes and march down to the security office to look at the footage. Still, there was nothing, just a grainy video of his anxious, grief-stricken wait outside the surgical theatre, and he felt like he was going insane, like everything was wrong, so wrong, and he wanted to give into the urge to sob into his hands, “This is not what happened, this is _wrong_ , I was _there_! Something killed my Katie. This was _real_!”

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a drive to know the truth, whose fiancee died on the operating table ( _no, she had an alien in her brain, some thing was inside her_ ), who missed the funeral because he was at home in their empty bed, half-drunk, tears leaking into the pillow ( _I can't face her friends, her family. I can't face the open grave, the flowers. I can't face it_ ), who felt the armour that had fallen away, the spiky shell that had softened, growing hard around him again ( _this isn't happening. They all could have believed me, they could have listened, they killed her. Fuck them all. Fuck this._ ) Who only managed to get out of bed days later, managed to bury every emotion but his anger and grief, which were too huge and stubborn to push away, and found himself at the cemetery, feeling stiff and half-paralyzed with sorrow, poking at the flowers and ugly stuffed animals people had left beside Katie's grave.

And then: the man, standing at the edge of the rows and rows of graves, watching. Owen wasn't delusional, wasn't going mad with grief; the man was staring at him, real and cold and horrible. Fury rose up over the grief, set him boiling, and he broke into a run, wanting to hurt something, wanting to hit back, wanting something or someone to suffer like she did, like he was right now. And in the middle of screaming, of trying to pummel the stranger's face in for his failure, of the urge to destroy, something snapped inside of him. There, on the grass, his fists aching and desperate fury engulfing him, the overwhelming realisation hit him full force that Katie was dead, gone forever, and he could do nothing about it, and suddenly he was sobbing against the stranger's chest, the only other person who knew what Katie had died of, that anything had happened at all. He felt like he was falling apart, like every one of his joints had come loose, like he was drowning inside his own brain, gasping for oxygen, like everything was out of sync.

When he finally managed to sit up, hiccuping and limp, the American stranger put his arm around Owen's shoulders, waited until he'd caught his breath, then offered to walk with him.

“Who are you?” was Owen's first question when he'd calmed down, and “My name is Captain Jack Harkness,” cleared nothing up, but at least the stranger had a name, and at least he believed that everything was real. Owen still felt like he was going mad, like the entire world was crumbling down around him.

“Your life doesn't end with her,” Harkness told him. _Doesn't it?_ he couldn't help thinking. _Every good thing that has ever happened in my life has been because of her. What now?_

“What are you going to do now?” As if he'd read his mind. “Go back to work, see echoes of her in every corridor?” And god, the torture that would be. The reminder that he'd once been in love, that he'd once been soft and gentle, that he'd once been able to smile without spikes. “You need a purpose. I'm building something. I need a medic.”

“Me?” How could he do anything, now, like this? He barely even felt human.

“You made them take more scans, you kept trying to track me down. You don't give up easily. I need someone like that to work with me in Cardiff.”

“To fight aliens.” Even when Harkness nodded, “Exactly,” he couldn't believe it. He'd seen the thing in Katie's head, watched it moving lazily across her brain, seen what it could do to people, and he still didn't think he could believe it. There had to be another answer, a logical one. There had to be. “Look I don't know what happened to Katie. And I don't know who you really are. But there is no such thing as aliens.”

“Just think about it,” Harkness told him, when they reach the cemetery gate and Owen's car. “Think about it, and give me a call when you make a decision.” Owen thought about it. He lay in the bed that still smelled like Katie in the flat full of Katie's things, and thought. How going back to the hospital meant going back to where they first met. How going back meant trying to be the sort of doctor he was when he was with her, when she'd taught him to be soft. How everyone there thought him mad with grief anyway, how he couldn't stand pity. How all of their friends were _her_ friends first, and he'd never been good enough with people to really know any of them. He thought about having to live in this flat, seeing Katie in everything around him, how he'd already burst into tears switching on the kettle, and sat there on the sofa with the blanket she loved wrapped around him like some pathetic child, weeping to the muted television. He called the number on the nondescript card Harkness had given to him.

He returned much of Katie's things to her parents, and sold most of his own belongings. Katie's wedding dress, he kept, though it was hidden away in a box, unlabeled, under everything else as he moved out so he wouldn't think of it. He got an apartment in Cardiff with a view, a definite bachelor pad, and _god_ he hated the idea of that, but he needed _something_ that might get him up in the morning, and if aesthetic pleasure was it, then that was good enough. But he kept his belongings to a minimum now: minimalist decoration, nothing more than the essential furniture and accessories. He didn't want to get comfortable. Four years of being comfortable and it ended in pain. Captain Jack Harkness gave him a week and a half to move in and get settled, to familiarise himself with the city. He spent most of the time sitting on his little sofa in a sort of daze, unable to really do anything, unable to convince himself exploring might do him good, unable to fall asleep in a bed that was too big and too empty and didn't smell like her. He couldn't eat. He wanted to scream at everything, scream and then sob until he couldn't breathe and then crumble into nothing.

His first day on the job, he dressed in a suit, and Harkness greeted him at the tourist centre, then brought him through a secret door and an elevator and a series of hallways and into the main base. Owen stood, staring, couldn't believe his eyes, felt that feeling of overwhelmed disorientation double. He felt like his sanity was slipping away, grief driving him into some strange world where nothing made sense. He'd wanted to cry every day since she'd died, now he wanted to curl in a ball somewhere.

“I'm having a breakdown, mental collapse,” he heard himself mutter, trying to rationalise it all.

“Owen,” Captain Harkness' solid voice broke through the fog, something stable in all the strangeness. “Why _did_ you become a doctor?”

“I thought if I could save one life, mine would be worthwhile.” Because under all that fascination, under all that desire to learn, more than anything, somehow he _cared_. “But you save one, and there's another, and another, all clawing at you, demanding to be saved.” He thought of all the people he'd saved and lost working A &E. He thought of his beautiful Katie, how he couldn't save her. How every death, every close call, no matter how calm he seemed, was always an ache of failure added to his heart. “And even if you do succeed, you can never save enough.”

Strong, solid hands on his shoulders, like a father comforting a son. “Maybe here you can.”

And Owen could do nothing but nod, and then follow Harkness around the base as he gave him a tour, a rundown of all the machines and equipment, a brief hello to the two other women on staff. He tried his best to concentrate, to let all this new and crazy stuff distract him; his new medical bay, so different from the usual examination room or surgical theatre, kitted out with technology he'd never seen before. And the weevils caught his interest, too, even more than the technology. And over the next week, Jack taught him how to shoot a gun, how to effectively bag a weevil, how catch a Hoix, how to effectively (or ineffectively) attempt diplomacy with a foreign alien ship wanting to land.

He learned that suits were not attire conducive to this job, and started wearing jeans and band t-shirts again, for the first time in years. And somehow this felt like putting on armour each day, adding spikes to his already prickly personality. He returned to his old snarl and bite. He smoked at work, just outside the tourist centre doors, or dangling his feet over the railing just above, sucking down two per break, just for the nicotine high. He acquainted himself not so much with the neighbourhood itself, but at least with its bars, Chippy Alley, and every liquor-selling shop within a short distance. And he found comfort there; not in casual drinking or picking up girls, he just drank until he could barely remember his new address, until there was nothing left but a sloshing sound in his head, until everything and everyone vanished in a haze of alcohol and he didn't have to think anymore. Most mornings were hungover mornings, half-asleep at his computer station, popping painkillers like candy and snapping at the girls, who learned to avoid him, to whisper together about what a fucking arsehole he was. His second week found him hungover in his empty bed, cotton-mouthed with a migraine drilling a hole in his face, his phone buzzing again and again despite the fact that he threw it across the room. He didn't care. The night before he'd seen someone who'd looked just like her in profile, had nearly vomited from grief, and instead turned back to the bar and proceeded to drown himself in booze before memories drowned him first. He was told the next morning that in no uncertain terms was he to ignore a call from work. He could come in hungover, so long as he could function enough to do his job, but to ignore a call was to possibly put his coworkers if not the fate of Cardiff at risk. Still, his life became a well-worn routine of work-drink-sleep, work-drink-sleep, repeat.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a new job as the medic and mortician of Torchwood Cardiff. Who bristled at emotions and avoided interactions because people were strange and frustrating and he was tired of it. Who smiled only when he was in the middle of an insult or in the middle of a discovery. And his barbed tongue dug into them all, even Jack at times, but the hate went nowhere and Owen, despite his freedom, felt like an angry dog trapped in a cage. Quick to anger and quick to learn, he turned to self-destruction without a second thought. This new job was a new start, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't leave himself behind.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who had a brilliant mind and a drive to help, whose grief made him broken and full of rage.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who rebuilt the spikes on his armour and the razors on his tongue to keep himself from any more pain.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who was cynical and rough, and bitterly hateful.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who hid a caring heart under fifteen tonnes of stone and a furious glare.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who loved for the first time and lost for the first time, and couldn't fathom either, and never recovered.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who hated the world because he loved too much and it hurt him, who felt too much and so felt nothing at all, who had nothing but furious frustration and utter apathy towards the will to live.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who tried his hardest to self-destruct in every way he could think of, sneering at death every time even when he closed his eyes and wished for it.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper, who grew up with no love, then gained it, and lost it, and never learned not to pick at scabs.

Once upon a time there was a man named Owen Harper who had a brilliant mind and a drive to help, who drank the hours away every night and drove too fast, who sneaked smoke breaks at work and wore a coat of spikes made from harsh words and rough hands. At Torchwood, he saved lives but ached when they were lost. It hardened him, but made cracks form more broadly. He yearned for connection, but couldn't shed his armor. A brilliant mind, anger, and a broken heart.

 


End file.
